Mu: "Let us be athletes!" Us: "YES, PLEASE!"

It definitely feels as though it's becoming common for athletes to go ham on reporters when they're mad, whether the reporter being hammed on is the cause of their upset or not. Joe Mixon from the Bengals did something similar last week. I doubt Mu says this if she'd won yesterday, but I could be wrong. There's gotta be some balance between athletes recognizing their living goes away if fans can't follow them (which very much requires the media to have some access to them, like it or not) and being able to tell a reporter to back off if they do cross a line (say, inquiring about family issues and the like).

Anything on her plate is her own doing. She is a professional athlete making a ton of money. One of the highest paid track athletes. She has to wake up, train, eat food. Anything extra is her agreeing to do things that she doesn't need to do. There are plenty of people who have full time jobs and still train like she does. I highly doubt she is training more than 2-3 hours per day, 20 ish hours per week. There is waaaaay more time than that in a week. She ran faster in college than she did this year while she was training at a high level and going to college as a fulltime student.

Threads like this are EXACTLY what she's talking about...but you are too ignorant to see it. Dude you are the other HS boys here are obsessed with Mu

I totally get it and fully support her sentiments.

Newsflash: Mu is not reading this forum. Nor is SML.

She also literally said something along the lines of, no other athlete has gone through the transitions she has. Sorry, I'm a Mu fan, but there's no way that's true.

Unfortunately pressure and attention are part of the job. Nike isn't paying her to be a recluse or a robot; she's a walking (running) advertisement. Of course it's important for athletes to have self-worth in what they're doing, and public pressure can make it harder to maintain that; I sympathize with that. It's not easy. But these athletes get prize money and contracts because this is a job and they have an audience. It's ridiculous for athletes like Mu and Sha'Carri Richardson to resent that.

Good on LRC for noting in their article that a lot of the pressure Mu faced was of her own (and maybe even more so, her coach's) making.

Perhaps the young lady might use the "Just Let Us Be Athletes" platitude toward the guy who had her run just one 800m race all season ahead of Budapest. 😃

isn't this just what this generation is known for? unable to accept criticism, mentally weak, self-entitled? take simone biles as an example, amazing gymnast, but mentally weak and a quitter. the media call her 'brave' and 'inspiring' instead of 'weak' and 'lazy'. anybody who goes against this narrative by telling the truth is called negative and toxic.

An athlete ist actually not what she is. Athletes would actually compete regularly.

She's over exposed, i see her face on a milk carton all the time 1-800-FIND-MU.

Simone Biles just won US Nationals for the 8th time. She is 26. For a gymnast to be so dominant for that long is unheard of. Think about the punishment on the body and the mind in a sport like that. Don’t bring her into this.

I do think Athing sounds young. She’s got the post college, post Olympic gold blues. Who can really understand that? Not most of us. You can’t really expect her to appreciate her running life like a 40 year old working 9-5 with no exceptional talent like hers. I think a lot of grousing is about misplaced putting yourself in her shoes. Sure, I would run on the rail.

Right now Mu is reminding me of Naomi Osaka who struggled so much with talking to the media, so much so that she isn't playing very much now. I feel bad for her. She seemed a nice kid and obviously is a tremendous tennis player. But there's more to being a pro tennis player than simply playing tennis. Players are also required to make themselves available to the media. So "just being athletes" isn't possible for tennis players and really isn't for pro runners, probably for nearly all high profile athletes either. They've all got shoe contracts and they're generally expected to be visible and accessible in order to promote the brand. It's part of what she signed on for when she did that deal with Nike.

Yes, this very much seems like a Naomi Osaka type situation. Perhaps getting bronze was the best thing for her, because maybe now the expectations (real or perceived) will be lower and she can relax more going forward.

I just find it so damn hard to be her fan. Agreed with what you said--"let us be athletes" really only works if the person actually does their sport of choice, which usually means competing in some shape or form.

I'm still done with her. Nothing at World Champs changed this.

Seems like some of these athletes, especially Osaka, have been overly praised for so much of their youth for winning so easily, that when they start hitting harder times they think people won't accept them losing. Everyone loses at times. Fans will still root for you.

This isn't a fan base problem, it's a coach/parent/hangers-on based problem.

i'm not disputing her achievements, i said clearly she is an 'amazing gymnast'.

when you stop competing and use terms like 'focusing on mental health', that is a weakness because a strong-willed person would not quit, temporarily or otherwise. society nowadays encourages this sort of weakness by justifying and glorifying it, whereas in the past people at the top of their sports were more mentally strong because they had to be, they had no choice, it wasn't acceptable to show any mental weakness. now it is easier to quit because there are no repercussions. when your sponsors just tell everybody how brave and amazing you are for quitting and keep on paying you, well why not take a year off?

i go to race to run, not to do interviews, so when i win a smaller race and the organisers want to interview me, I just politely say no or screw my face up and make an excuse. sometimes they persist and they get what they want but if i really cared that much I would just put my foot down and refuse. i know the pros have media obligations but in that circumstance you don't really have to be polite, they aren't your friends or acquaintances, they're just a nuisance, so you can just answer everything with one word answers and get out of there asap. or make a game out of it and do what ronnie o sullivan did and start talking like a robot or in a heavy Australian accent.

I get liking the athletes you cover but Citius Mag is the definite of participation trophy culture and is so terrible at covering the sport because its run by Millennials. LetsRun is soooooooooooo much better and its not even close